The Transubstantiation of the Environment into Mental Events

— Understanding Jaynesian Consciousness in the Context of the Evolution of Mentalities

In Catholic theology transubstantiation describes how during mass bread and wine are converted into the body and blood of Christ. For believers, how this happens exactly is a mystery. Also mysterious is how energy and information absorbed by an organism is converted into mental activity. Of course, we actually know a fair amount about sensory inputs, perceptual mechanisms, neurological anatomy, etc. Nevertheless, we still grapple with how in the case of humans subjective experiences are generated; how we each contain our own personal cosmos visible only to the individual. Julian Jaynes at least offered some intriguing ideas on this transubstantiation. His arguments, which most decidedly go against the prevailing intellectual tide, adopted a cultural-historical perspective on a problem that is assumed to be essentially neurological-evolutionary in nature.

Jaynesian Consciousness in the Context of Other Mental Phenomena

All organisms have nervous systems (except sea sponges, placozoans, and mesozoans; but note that even sponges, unicellular animals, and non-animals — e.g., slime molds—have cell-to-cell signaling mechanisms, which are may be precursors to neurons). However, living creatures endowed with nervous systems vary tremendously in terms of complexity. Hydrae have nerve cells but no nerves. Cnidarians (e.g., jellyfish) do not possess a brain but have a system of separate but connected neurons (nerve net). The nervous system of insects is more complex but also decentralized, with a brain, ventral nerve cord, and ganglia. The latter, clusters of connected neurons, are able to govern movements without input from the brain. Compared to invertebrates, the nervous system of vertebrates are more centralized and specialized. Vertebrate nervous systems share a basic structure: Central nervous system (CNS; a brain and spinal cord) and a peripheral nervous system (PNS) consisting of sensory and motor nerves.

Perceptions, Conceptions, and Superceptions

In an attempt to position the human ability to consciously interiorize in relation to nonhuman mental capabilities, I introduce “ceptions.” A ception is what happens when a nervous system interfaces with the environment. A particular organism’s nervous system limits, determines, and the sets the range of potentialities of the interaction between it and its ecology in a certain way. In principle any living entity endowed with a nervous system generates ceptions, though arguably some nervous systems may be so primitive that talk of ceptions may be inappropriate.

Ceptions come in three basic types. The first are perceptions; in evolutionary terms these have their origins in the oldest nervous systems, i.e., nerve nets. As we move from simple to complex nervous systems information processing becomes not just a perceptual apparatus attuned to environmental stimuli but an information storage and manipulation system, possessed of “conceptions,” which are the second type of ception. Building upon perceptions (both evolutionarily and neuroanatomically), these are representations of the environment. These internalized pieces of information (“mental representations”; here used guardedly when applied to simple organisms) are employed to better navigate through and obtain resources from the surroundings and deal with conspecifics. Probably many nonhuman animals utilize conceptions though these are quite elementary, lacking the extensive and dense associative connections that the large brains of humans are able to store, generate, and rework into new patterns of useful, adaptive information (the fundamental neurological differences in terms of mental abilities between insects, fish, mammals, primates, humans, etc., is another crucial fact lost on researchers who really should know better).

The third type of ception — superceptions, which are unique to humans — rests upon the previous two types. These subsume several types. The first are extraceptions or audiovisual hallucinations interpreted as divine voices and visitations in bicameral times). Second are introceptions (quasi-perceptual mental imagery). About three millennia ago the human mind learned how to translate bodily sensations into a new way of knowing the world, a mode which seems so distinct from the hard, external physicality of things. This transubstantiation of bodily sights, sounds, smells, and touch into subjectivized experiences that only dwell in a nonphysical, invisible realm of the individual’s introcosm is an impressive feat. Indeed, it is the premise of mind–body dualism that has so bedeviled philosophers and whose seeming magicality has confused thinkers who have attempted to come to terms with it. Usually researchers conflate perception with introception, thereby glossing over the singularity of conscious interiorized experience.

Consciously interiorized perceptions becomequasi-perceptions or conscious percepts, while consciously interiorized conceptions become conscious concepts (i.e., mentally “seeable” via mental imagery). Consciousness does not just float around a person’s head, as if it were an ethereal force, energy, or substance. In the same way mathematical operators require numbers on which to operate, consciousness needs something to work on (perceptions and conceptions). While the idea of “consciousness” certainly exists, this must not be confused with what it does. Driving a vehicle results in the movement of getting from point A to point B. But that motion is not the vehicle itself. Much neuroscientific research assumes that consciousness can be “found” in the central nervous system (localism), confusing information processing with physicality. But in the same way motion cannot be located in a car, consciousness defies positioning in a three-dimensional place.

Perceptions, then are “metabolized” into interiorized conscious percepts. How psychological processes turn sensations into subjective experiences is not understood. However, we do know that language — specifically metaphoric expressions — is an indispensable part of the transfer of information from sensory impressions to concepts and introcepts. The role of language in such a transformation means that the ability to convert the perceptual into the introceptual is a cultural achievement. In other words, conscious interiority is based on linguistic acquisition and social transmission; it is not an evolutionary development (i.e., genetic mutation and inheritance). The ability to transfigure externally-oriented sensation into interiorized experiences populating our psychoscape took centuries, if not millennia, to acquire. Transforming what is physically seeable and hearable into what only the mind’s eye “sees” and mind’s ear “hears” has dramatically amplified human capabilities. But the transmutation of perceptual reactivity into conceptual processing and then the latter into introceptual deliberation confuses many, since not a few unthinkingly assume that perception equals thinking equals consciousness. But analyzing the human mind, the most complicated entity in the universe, requires a much more subtle and sophisticated set of intellectual tools.

Hallucinations and mental images, both being superceptions, share commonalities (mental imagery is hallucinoid, i.e., similar to but not exactly hallucinations). But they have important differences (Chart 1).

Chart 1. Hallucinations and Mental Images Compared.

* This sense of control varies. Individuals who are traumatized sometimes suffer from intrusive images or flashbacks. Moreover, some individuals, though conscious, have aphantasia, i.e., they do not introceive mental imagery.

Another type of superceptions are vestigial extraceptions (anomalous behaviors, e.g., hallucinations still experienced by schizophrenics). Lastly, we might also mention coceptions, or coinciding of perceptions and introceptions; such overlapping deludes us into assuming that interior experiences are sensory reflections of reality.

Here we should note that perceptuo-conceptual operations are fast, automatic, and routine (consciousless mentation), while introceptions are slow, deliberate, and evoked by some measure of stress or a novel encounter (conscious mentation) (Chart 2).

Chart 2. Conscious vs. Consciousless Ceptions.

We should also note that the defining lines between different ceptions are admittedly debatable (especially conceptions and superceptions). But as heuristic devices they have value in illustrating the rich variety of mental systems in the animal kingdom. In any case, to be clear, ceptions require an interaction between a nervous system and the environment to occur.

How Mentation Evolves Itself: Meta-framing

A less mysterious, more scientific term for “transubstantiation” is meta-framing. This is a core, defining mechanism of mind in general that drives adaptation, or more specifically, how ceptions build upon more elementary ceptions. Meta-framing is an upgrading in mentality in which a more fit adaptation builds upon an earlier structure. These structures may be neuroanatomical, psychological, cognitive, or sociocultural. Meta-framing occurs in four major time scales: (1) evolutionary; (2) historical; (3) socio-developmental (over an individual’s lifetime); and (4) immediate (a person’s daily interfaces with the social and natural environment). Whether viewed from the unimaginable scale of evolutionary time, or the more imaginable passing of millennia and centuries, we can trace out how superceptions have been constructed on conceptions, and the latter have been built on perceptions.

Meta-framing allows an organism to scale new heights to survey matters from a different, better informed perspective. This defines mind — always moving forward, striding across stepping stones, one foot on the past and the other about to land on suppositious possibilities. Specific operations of this climb-and-overlook process among humans are abstracting, analogizing, and metaphors. The latter play a pivotal role in our cognition. Their deployment can be described as our capability to “step back” from the natural and social environment and search out its familiar features and employ these to explain the unfamiliar and generate “as if” knowledge forms. Introspectable, subjective self-awareness is itself the result of how metaphors, psyche’s basic building blocks, have expanded our psychological toolkit in response to social complexity. Indeed, the features of conscious interiority are themselves grounded in culturally-learned metaphors; they are not innate mental features. Metaphors allows us to rise above and objectively cognize ourselves. It permits us to construct a higher conceptual stage on which we act out hypothetical scenarios.

A Final Word: Why Animals Can Never Be Conscious

Like the term “consciousness,” it is not clear what writers mean by “experience.” The problem is that this word triggers in our mind connotations of sensations, feelings, perceptions, and thinking. But neither sensory reaction to environmental stimuli nor cognizing require Jaynesian consciousness. In other words, none of these aforementioned processes are tantamount to a subjective, interiorized mind-space, the hallmark of a Jaynesian definition of consciousness. More technically, only in humans enculturated to be conscious does an “I” narrate activities in a self-reflexive (“self-observing-self”) mode. Subjective, introceptual experiences are a strictly human affair; animals possess very sophisticated mental abilities, but they are not conscious in the Jaynesian sense. Very well-educated researchers, who should know better, often anthropomorphize animals, assuming that since nonhuman organism can perceive and interact with their environment, they must therefore be conscious. We commonly assume that animals (especially our pets) have “experiences,” and from a Jaynesian perspective it is acceptable to argue that, as long as we acknowledge that those experiences are consciousless and lack subjective introspectable self-awareness (admittedly “nonconscious experience” sounds like a strange oxymoron). Animal “experiences” are experiential in the sense that they constitute the neuropsychological registration of mental events. However, animals completely lack any subjectivity. This is a hard fact to accept among many, so habituated to assuming that perception and consciousness are synonymous.